Southington, An All-American, Tight Knit Town

A red barn and red Maple leaves are a compliment and contrast to the green of the apple trees and blue clouded sky at Rogers Orchards in Southington.

A red barn and red Maple leaves are a compliment and contrast to the green of the apple trees and blue clouded sky at Rogers Orchards in Southington. (John Woike)

JOSEPH A. O'BRIEN JR.

This Connecticut town has 57 restaurants on its main street.

Ask most anyone who lives in Southington and they will likely tell you that theirs is the quintessential American town.

The U.S. Office of War Information obviously thought so in the spring of 1942 when it chose Southington as the microcosm of America and sent photographers to capture scenes of daily life in town. The photos, which extolled the virtues of American life, were included in pamphlets that were dropped by aircraft over much of Europe during World War II.

Arthur H. Secondo, president and CEO of the Southington Chamber of Commerce, believes he knows what makes Southington so special.

"We have everything right here," Secondo said without hesitation when asked about the town's popularity, especially among its inhabitants. From Italian-American and apple festivals, to historic sites to the traditional New England town green, sheep, cows, Southington also has 57 restaurants on Queen Street alone.

"If you can't find something to eat in Southington, you're just not hungry," Secondo said.

Jobs, good schools, recreation and spirit have made Southington a tight-knit community. Comprising roughly 36 square miles, Southington was part of Farmington before it incorporated as an independent town in 1779. The name Southington is a blending of South Farmington, which had been used to describe the area more than 50 years earlier.

Alex Syphers

Kahlan Carlson, 7, of Southington screams with excitement as she and friend William Charette, 5, of Plainville take a ride on the dragon roller coaster at the Southington Apple Harvest.

Kahlan Carlson, 7, of Southington screams with excitement as she and friend William Charette, 5, of Plainville take a ride on the dragon roller coaster at the Southington Apple Harvest. (Alex Syphers)

The town seal, designed in 1942 by Louis T. Prevost, who lived in the Plantsville section, features illustrations of First Congregational Church on the town green and the 19th century, one-story, 30-by-20-foot bolt factory of Micah Rugg and Martin Barnes that was built in 1839 in the Marion section of town.

Rugg, a blacksmith by trade, started making carriage bolts by hand in 1818. In 1840 he and Barnes became partners. On Aug. 31, 1842, Rugg received U.S. patent No. 2,766, which secured his design of a machine that trimmed bolt heads, work that had been done by hand and hammer.

The factory, which employed six people who earned a dollar a day for a 12-hour shift, initially produced on average 500 bolts a day. It was the first factory to make nuts and bolts in the United States.

Southington became the center of bolt making in America in the 19th century. A.P. Plant & Co., whose founder, Amzi P. Plant and his brother Ebenezer, lent their family's name to the Plantsville section of Southington, made carriage, elevator, bridge and machine bolts. Before the Plants took over, the area had been known as the "Corner," or "Pearl's Corner," after Orrin Pearl, who had established a comb factory there.

The Clark brothers — William, Henry and Charles — established Clark Bros.' Bolt Co. in the Milldale section of town in 1854. The company made hundreds of thousands of bolts for building ships during the Civil War. After fire destroyed the operation in 1893, the company constructed a 100,000-square-foot facility on Canal Street and carried on. The company lasted until 1987, when it could no longer compete with foreign competitors and shut down.

How the Marion Village neighborhood got its name is somewhat peculiar in that it is likely named for Marion, Ga., or Marion, Ala. The only connections between the three Marions are the sons of Asahel Upson, who lived in the Union district of Southington. Upson had nine sons,, several of whom went into business in the South. The Rev. R. Timlow's ecclesiastical and sketches of Southington printed in 1875 said the sons went to Marion, Ga. The information accompanying the application by Marion, Conn., for inclusion in the National Registry of Historic Places, which was approved in 1988, said it was Marion, Ala.

Naming the area Marion, which grew around the intersection of the main roads from Farmington to Waterbury and from Bristol to New Haven, was of particular benefit to the U.S. Postal Service, which established an office there in the mid-1800s. With villages sprouting up in Southington, Plantsville, Milldale and Marion, post offices were established in each.

"Southington has four zip codes," Secondo said.

Although Southington was the hub of bolt making, its inhabitants were busy with other endeavors. The first patent secured by a Southington resident went to Nathaniel Jones on May 9, 1809, for his improvements to the wooden comb. Edward M. Converse obtained one on May 6, 1812, for pressing and rendering transparent horse hooves for making combs and such. Salmon R. Plumb received his on April 10, 1860, for a sausage stuffer.

Although bolt-making is in Southington's past, manufacturing is still alive and well. AcuCut Inc. uses electrical discharge machining and lasers while making parts for numerous industries, including aerospace, appliance and automotive. Supreme-Lake Manufacturing Inc. makes precision screw machine parts and ball valve component. Yarde Metals Inc., which is among the town's top five tax payers and employers, sells made-to-order aluminum, stainless steel, carbon rods and bars, sheets and plates, structural and tubing and pipe. It also sells brass and copper products.

The world headquarters of ESPN is located just a town away in Bristol.

As town officials look to the future, however, they have decided not to leave the tax base strictly in the manufacturing basket. Lou Perillo, the town's economic development coordinator, said Southington has given the green light to a $20 million organics-recycling project proposed by Turning Earth LLC in partnership with Covanta Energy Corp. The central Connecticut facility, which will use an anaerobic digestion and in-vessel composting system developed in Denmark by Aikin Technology, will produce renewable energy and compost from organic wastes produced by people, animals and plants.

The facility, on about 37 acres in an industrial area off Spring Street, is expected to begin operating in 2016.

The first European to venture into Panthorne, the area of Farmington that would become Southington, was Samuel Woodruff, who settled among the indigenous Tunxis in 1696. Since then, the population has grown considerably, reaching 43,661 by July 1, 2013.

Among that number are 6,700 school students who are enrolled in the town's 11 schools: eight elementary, two middle schools and Southington High School. The school district is among the town's top employers, having 1,079 full-time equivalent positions.

But life in Southington is hardly all work and no play.

For leisure, the town boasts of three municipal parks, two of which have swimming pools. For those who like winter, there is also Mount Southington Ski Area, founded in 1964 Dr. Harold Richman, an orthodontist who practiced in Middletown. There is also Lake Compounce, the oldest continuously operating amusement park in the United States. Although the park's address is in Bristol, its lake is in Southington.

Southington lies along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, an 80-mile, route that follows the old Farmington River Canal that stretched from New Haven to Northampton, Mass. The canal, which opened in 1835, operated for just 20 years until railroads took over moving people and freight in New England. For the more adventurous hiker, there is the Metacomet Trail that passes along the traprock ridge line that runs north and south along the town's eastern side at Bradley Mountain (700 feet) that overlooks Crescent Lake, aka Plainville Reservoir.

Southington is a community filled with local pride, especially when it comes to athletic achievements of those who as student athletes walked the halls of Southington High School. Southington Sports Hall of Fame Inc. was organized in 2009 and voted in its first inductees the following year. Among them was the undefeated 1949 Lewis High School football team, known today as the Blue Knights. Lewis High was replaced by Southington High School in 1974. Also inducted was the 1983 Lady Knights softball team, which also went undefeated with pitcher Julie Bolduc delivering an ERA of 0.043 for the season.

Secondo, a lifelong resident of Southington who has led the chamber for 12 years, can tick off the current seasonal records for the Blue Knights football and baseball teams.

"In 77 years there only been three losing seasons" in the football program and the baseball team has had "only one losing season since 1961," Secondo said, adding that the softball team has won 15 state championships.

Two native sons, Rob Dibble and Carl Pavano, pitched in the World Series: Dibble for the Cincinnati Reds in 1990 and Pavano for the Florida Marlins in 2003.

In many ways, life in Southington carries on much the way it did in May 1942 when photographer Charles Fenno Jacobs snapped pictures of the Memorial Day (originally Decoration Day) observance, of students from the Beecher Street School where half the students were of Italian descent and half were Polish, and of Nick Grillo, an Italian immigrant and flori-culturist who developed the thornless rose in Southington.

Jacobs even photographed Southington's Bradley Memorial Hospital and Health Center, a gift to the town by Julia Arnold Bradley who died in 1919. She stipulated in 1913 in her will that her estate be used to fund a hospital "for the use and benefit of the inhabitants of said Town and its vicinity." The hospital was dedicated on July 9, 1938.

In 2006, Bradley merged with New Britain General Hospital to form the Hospital of Central Connecticut which has campuses in Southington and New Britain. The hospital affiliated with Hartford HealthCare in 2011.

Bradley Memorial has been a cornerstone of the Southington community since it opened. Residents fear that Hartford HealthCare intends to close the in-patient units at Bradley while promising to maintain its emergency department. Hartford HealthCare also has plans for an urgent-care, walk-in health facility on Queen Street in Southington.

Addressing the town council in January, Marilyn Huntley, a registered nurse and member of the Community Committee to Save Bradley, said the committee's goal "is to retain Bradley as a viable hospital with the ER and with the inpatient beds and support services."

"Our community committee is not fighting with Hartford HealthCare," Huntley said. "We are trying to convince them that keeping Bradley as a viable hospital on Meriden Avenue is a good thing for the town."